Movie Review: Bad Education

May 22, 2020

Back in September 2019, Bad Education premiered at the Toronto Film Festival to high praise from many critics. The film finally became available to the public in April on HBO streaming platforms. Bad Education is based on the true crime story of the largest public school embezzlement scandal in the United States. If you haven’t yet seen the movie, there will be plot spoilers below, so if you don’t wish to be spoiled, you should stop reading this post right now. You have been warned.

Appearance is everything for Frank Tassone (played by Hugh Jackman), the superintendent of the Roslyn school district on Long Island. This translates to everything in his life, from the suit he wears every morning, to his schools Ivy League admissions totals, to an eight million dollar sky bridge to make campus more attractive. Jackman shines in this roll; able to capture the charisma needed to play the part of a posh superintendent in one of the most affluent areas of the country.

Frank is clearly admired by parents and students at the start of the film, and it’s easy to see why. He maintains his charming persona which includes knowing everyone’s names, their relations to others in the district, and their respective fields of study or occupation. The parents mostly care that Frank has greatly improved Roslyn school district’s academic standing, resulting in a huge positive impact on the local economy and real estate.

All of this goodwill is put in jeopardy when the school’s auditor noticed a few questionable purchases made by the assistant superintendent, Pam Glucken (played by the equally excellent Allison Janney). These findings would prove to be just the “tip of the iceberg”, as a student reporter digs through years of files and finds millions of dollars of purchases made that were not made for the school district.

As the film progresses, the view of Frank slowly changes from questioning if he knew anything about the apparent larceny, to attempting to figure out how much he was stealing as well. When all was said and done, viewers find out that over eleven million dollars had been stolen by the district’s administrators.

The director and writers of Bad Education did an excellent job of turning this true crime story into a compelling comedic drama for the widescreen. Watching Frank and Pam, who seem to deeply care about their jobs (or at least they did), fall into a grave they dug themselves gives a surprisingly satisfying sense of justice.

Despite stealing millions from taxpayers, there was a moment in the film I empathized with Frank. After an over the top analogy to get a student to pronounce the word “accelerate” correctly, the student’s mother asks Frank “What’s your problem?” Frank responds, “My problem? My problem is you. It’s the people who trot their poor children out like race horses at Belmont; who derive some perverse joy out of treating us like low-level service reps. Do you remember the teachers who sat with you, who held you by the hand, who taught you to add and subtract, or showed you Gatsby and Salinger, for the first time? Mockingbird even? Do their names escape you? Are their faces a blur? You might forget, but we don’t. We never forget. Ever.”

As the son of an educator, I can confidently say that a lot of the time, teachers don’t get the credit, respect, or compensation they are due. I’ve heard/seen story after story of parents taking the selfless sacrifices my mom makes to help their own children for granted, and it is incredibly frustrating. Obviously, I don’t believe that’s a good reason to justify the theft of millions of dollars, but I do believe that it’s an incredibly important perspective to see, and I’m glad we got to see it in the film.

With the subject matter in mind, it’s easy to see a boring film being made to tell the story of two school administrators stealing a ton of money from the yearly budget. Thankfully, Bad Education is quite the opposite, drawing in viewers with excellent acting and storytelling; to the point you may even start to relate to grand larcenists.

Sources

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8206668/quotes

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